Where the River Sometimes Flooded
by P.A. Landslide
Summary: She does not know anything about him, she thinks, even after seven years of friendship with him. Who is this man? What was her to him? What does he know about love, with all its divisions and fences.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or anything related to him, except the way I felt when I first read the Philosopher's Stone, more than a decade ago.**

**Fact About the author: Born on the same year as Daniel Radcliffe.**

**Author's Note: If you do like this story, please leave me a review, or favourite the story. It is the only feedback we get, and keep us going.**

**Chapter 1 : Abandoned**

Most mornings they used to come into the dark kitchen, and prepare themselves breakfast. Harry would drink some beer. They were home where the outside world couldn't reach them. In a few moments they would step out of the house into the non-magical London, and would come back only when it's dark, both exhausted and longing to see each other. Sometimes they would talk about things. Sometimes they would kiss. Sometimes they just slept. But there always was love. They were happy. Whatever happened, Harry and Hermione, married to each other, were happy. That was, Hermione would often say, all that mattered.

When he came to lie in her arms, sometimes she would ask him what was it that made him love her. No answer was ever correct. People don't analyse the reasons before they fall in love, Harry would say. Sometimes she would ask him when exactly he fell in love with her. To this he answered well, for he remembered the exact moment it happened. He would say Hogwarts, the day Lord Voldemort died, May 3rd, 1998. In a few days, under a starry sky, they will be kissing, his arms around her shoulders, holding her tight, as if to melt her into his body, her fingers laced in his hair. The Dark Lord will rise again, and Harry won't be there to save the day.

There was only one portrait in the house - her mother's, who died seven years ago, not long after she moved to Australia with Hermione's father. The portrait wasn't moving. It wasn't magical. Nothing in the house was magical, except for two people and two wands. There was no portrait of her father, who went missing the day mother died. The cause for her death was unknown to muggle authorities. It was Avada Kedevra, the most unforgivable of the unforgivable curses, which never left a trace. There were times when the guilt was too much for Hermione to cope with, and Harry would try to console her. She didn't know how he felt, he often thought. It was the hero's burden – his responsibility. Was he a curse upon her?

Now Harry inhales her, behind her knees where she smelt like wood. She has grown older, more in her mind than her body. She was a wife now, she would say, and he a husband. There was a home for them to return to, a life to be lived with each other. Harry watches her sleeping. He wonders what she's dreaming of. Does she still dream about the woods, the time they spent when Ron left them? He thinks that there is nothing of the woods or mountains in Hermione anymore. She has moved on, or desperately wants to move on. She wants a normal life – a life with a home, a lover, and perhaps children.

When they were alone in the woods, searching for Horcruxes without much success, sometimes there was so much sexual tension between them that they both waited for something to happen. But it didn't. When Ron returned, Harry thought that their life there was over – the place where both Harry and Hermione were aware of their feelings for each other. He thought nothing more would happen between them. That he would never meet her as a lover. A war had to end for him to know that he could never let that happen, that there was no way for him to retreat back to his previous habits, to love Ginny again as if nothing had changed. Hermione. How mellifluous was her name? How erotic did it sound? She had started to appear in his dreams.

She stands up inside the tent where she had been curled up on a chair all through last night, crying ceaselessly until she fell asleep. She is feeling dazed. Her mind still doesn't accept Ron's departure, but when she looks at his bunk, now empty, she will see that it's true. Outside it's raining, and is getting heavier. She turns and moves away from Harry into the darkness in the kitchen. She stands there in silence, thinking about random things, the smell of the rain, a book she read as a child, Ron. He has abandoned her, she knows. She wants to cry again. Looking around she finds a candle and lights it up. It is a magical candle, said to be invented by the ancient people of Sayara to last for a hundred years. They will have to spend the day in candlelight. The rain shows no signs of leaving.

There are men who've been trapped alone in deserted islands for years and still survive to tell about it. Then there are men who've voluntarily chosen isolation - the strange folks who withdraw themselves from society and live in solitude. They are the children of wilderness, people who can live forever. She is now cooking. There are some fish left that she can cook for breakfast. Perhaps she can go on like this forever, living alone, subsisting on fish and fungi. Perhaps Harry will stay with her, keeping her company. Perhaps. She is aware of the sadness of these thoughts, but everything has been said and done. Ron has left her.

She has sensed that Harry has now woken up. He would of course not want to talk about anything, as usual. That was how he felt safest, by revealing none of his emotions, or his thoughts. Harry Potter, who was once a hero; what does he think about her? She doesn't know anything about him, when she thinks about it, even after seven years of friendship, of caring for him, of mothering him. Suddenly she is overcome by a certain feeling of shyness. There, in the midst of a forest, inside a small tent, isolated from civilisation, she is alone with a boy. She is certain that nothing would happen between them. Still the notion was unsettling.

He has now walked over to where she is in the kitchen. He looks at her uncertainly, and goes by her without wishing her good morning. She turns her face away to avert his gaze. He may think it's anger. But it is something altogether different; grief mixed with shyness and many other feelings. She is overcooking the fish, but Harry won't complain. That unsettling feeling has returned to her again. She is now cooking for him. Images of a man and his woman. She hears a voice, Harry's voice. He is repeating to himself that Ron is gone, without realising that she could hear him. Harry.

Once breakfast is ready, she would motion to him to come and eat. It would be a silent breakfast, except for the sound of rain, pouring down on their tent. Hermione thought that she wouldn't be able to eat much. But she is hungry, and she will eat almost as much as Harry. When she turns her head, his stare will follow her into the opened entrance to the tent, where they wished to see Ron coming back. They both know this is impossible. Once they've vacated the place, their protective enchantment would make it impossible for him to find his way back. Harry is now staring at Hermione, looking as if he was about say something. Hermione looks down at her plate. It is time to leave, she knows.

He seems to have found it difficult to speak to her. "We must pack up our things. We are already too late to leave. Burn everything we don't need."

They slowly pack up their things. It would renew her pain. It's an act of giving up, of letting him go. At night sometimes, during the days Ron and her were apart, she would dream about this moment. She would wake up at midnight with a start. She would be breathing heavily, her forehead covered with a thin sheen of sweat. She will find Harry staring at the roof of the tent, unable to sleep, like her. She would say Harry, I can't sleep. Nightmares. Neither can I Hermione, he would say, almost inaudibly, as if it was a secret that only the two of them know. They would then talk until one of them fell asleep again, sometimes four five hours, sometimes five minutes. They would talk about the most intimate of things, having found strength in the nearness to each other, both knowing that they were closer to each other than they ever were, and getting still closer by each sleepless night. But during day they would never mention the small things they talked about, only the big things, the dark lords, Horcruxes, deathly hallows, as if they were the things that mattered.

"I'm ready" she says, everything packed inside her beaded bag. It is still raining. Neither of them tries to cover them. For the briefest moment, she wants Harry to hold her tight, to cover her from the downpour using his body. This is not the first time she's felt this way, but this is the first time she thought about it, prompted by the fact that they were now alone. He would never come back to her. Ron. There, do not drop my heart.

"Take my hand" says Harry, prepared to disapparate. There's firmness in his voice.

And so they vanish, leaving no trace, where Ron won't find them.


End file.
